{"id":6863,"date":"2020-12-10T12:40:37","date_gmt":"2020-12-10T09:40:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.evenzia.com\/?p=6863"},"modified":"2023-07-26T17:24:15","modified_gmt":"2023-07-26T14:24:15","slug":"how-to-do-local-seo-for-businesses-without-physical-locations-in-2021","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.evenzia.com\/fr\/how-to-do-local-seo-for-businesses-without-physical-locations-in-2021\/","title":{"rendered":"How To Do Local SEO for Businesses Without Physical Locations in 2021"},"content":{"rendered":"\t\t
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\u201cMy business makes local deliveries, but doesn\u2019t have a storefront. How do I handle listings management?\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n\n

\u201cI work from home. How should I be doing local SEO?\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n\n

\u201cAre there any tips for doing local SEO for clients like NerdWallet or Credit Karma that serve all customers virtually?\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n\n

Queries like these about doing local SEO for businesses with nuanced, hidden, or no physical locations and with varied models of customer fulfillment are AMA FAQs and perennial topics on marketing fora. Attendees at the recent\u00a0Moz Webinar on The ROI of Local SEO\u00a0<\/a>repeatedly asked about this subject.<\/p>\n\n

Business owners and marketers who haven\u2019t serendipitously discovered Google\u2019s various guidelines are left wondering how to promote non-brick-and-mortar brands. Even where there\u2019s awareness that such guidance exists, Google is continually evolving its stance.\u00a0It\u2019s easy to make mistakes, overlook updates, and miss out on opportunities.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n

The great news is, there are local marketing possibilities for almost every business type, but you have to know which pathway to follow, based on how the brand you\u2019re marketing operates. In today\u2019s column, I\u2019ll help you identify your model along with the best opportunities available to you for being discovered by the maximum number of local customers.<\/p>\n\n

Identify your business model<\/h2>\n\n

If you\u2019re asking about how to do local SEO\u00a0for something other than a brick-and-mortar brand<\/strong>, chances are, the business you\u2019re marketing falls into one of four categories:<\/p>\n\n

1. Service Area Business (SAB)<\/h3>\n\n

Most home services (plumbing, landscaping, housekeeping, etc.) fall into this category. You may or may not have physical street addresses that serve as headquarters or offices, but the defining feature of your business is that you serve nearby customers face-to-face at their locations, not at yours.<\/p>\n\n

2. Home-based business<\/h3>\n\n

Your home address is your physical location, and you may either serve nearby customers at your house (like a daycare center), or go to nearby customers to serve them (like a dog walker), or you might do a combination of both (like a yoga teacher who teaches some classes at their home studio and some as private appointments at clients homes). The defining feature of your business is that you\u2019re working out of your house.<\/p>\n\n

*If you work from home but don\u2019t ever meet face-to-face with customers for delivery or fulfillment of any kind, then you don\u2019t fall under this category; you fall under category 3.<\/p>\n\n

3. Virtual business<\/h3>\n\n

You conduct all transactions virtually, via phone, computer, shipping, and other remote means. Your business may be e-commerce (like the Dollar Shave Club), or offer digital services (like Credit Karma), or sell via print catalogue or other remote methodology. You may be operating out of one or more physical addresses and want to get the attention of customers in various regions or cities, but no customers ever come to your locations. The defining feature of your business is that you never interact in-person with customers.<\/p>\n\n

4. Hybrid business<\/h3>\n\n

This category is a sort of catch-all that covers many variations.<\/p>\n\n

One classic example is a restaurant with on-site dining where customers pay in person, curbside pickup where customers come to the location but may pay online, and delivery where customers pay online and drivers come to their homes.<\/p>\n\n

Another variant would be a home services company like a security specialist with walk-in key grinding at a physical premise, at-home appointments for installation of new locks on doors, and e-commerce sales of security products.<\/p>\n\n

Yet another hybrid would be a model like the Vermont Country Store, with its brick-and-mortar shops, e-commerce shopping, and huge volume of print catalog-driven sales.<\/p>\n\n

Hybrid business models became more common in 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic and other factors, and there is no single defining feature of them. They are only united when all of them are looking for ways to increase visibility to customers in a specific local region.<\/p>\n\n

In most cases, if the business you\u2019re marketing is a hybrid, then your best bet will be to find the relevant opportunities in models 1-3, pair them with any applicable brick-and-mortar opportunities if those also match your model, and move forward with a very broad, hybrid strategy that seeks geographic visibility by every means possible.<\/p>\n\n

Never do these things, regardless of your model<\/h2>\n\n

Before we begin listing out your model-based local SEO opportunities, now is the time to protect the brand you\u2019re marketing from unwanted outcomes by avoiding missteps. No matter whether you\u2019re trying to earn local visibility for an SAB, a home-based business, a virtual brand, or a hybrid, scratch these from your playbook:<\/p>\n\n

    \n
  1. Don\u2019t set up unstaffed virtual offices or P.O. boxes in an effort to fake locations for the sake of creating local business listings.<\/li>\n
  2. Don\u2019t set up strings of locations via the houses of staff, friends, or family members in an effort to fake operating multiple locations.<\/li>\n
  3. Don\u2019t set up listings for vacation homes, model homes, or empty properties. You can list the sales office of such businesses, but not the properties being rented or sold.<\/li>\n
  4. Never, as a marketer, silently engage in violations of\u00a0Google\u2019s Guidelines<\/a>. If you and a client choose together to risk a penalty or suspension for some reason, you\u2019re agreeing to share the risk of potential disaster, but never undertake a forbidden strategy without the client\u2019s knowledge.<\/li>\n
  5. Be careful about over-promising results or agreeing to unrealistic goals when competing against brick-and-mortar businesses. Whether Google is genuinely biased towards locations that display their street address is a subject of long debate, myth, and speculation. What can be said with certainty is that it\u2019s tough competing for local visibility with brick-and-mortar brands when you aren\u2019t marketing a brick-and-mortar brand, so go into the work with informed expectations instead of unachievable aims, based on how Google appears to be handling results for your key search phrases.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n\n

    Now we\u2019re ready to talk strategy!<\/p>\n\n

    How to do local SEO for Service Area Businesses<\/h2>\n\n
    \"\"<\/figure>\n\n

    Image Credit:\u00a0Nacho<\/a><\/p>\n\n

    Abundant opportunities exist for service area businesses without public physical locations. In fact, updates to Google\u2019s Guidelines in 2020 created a more favorable scenario for SABs. We\u2019ll break your activities down into three sections: local, organic, and paid.<\/p>\n\n

    Local marketing for SABs<\/h3>\n\n

    Your path to success begins in understanding Google\u2019s requirements (which exist\u00a0here<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0here<\/a>) specific to SABs. You should read them in full, but I\u2019ll excerpt the most salient points here:<\/p>\n\n

    In-person contact required<\/h4>\n\n

    The guidelines state that SABs must make in-person contact of some kind with customers to be eligible for a Google My Business listing. However, during the pandemic, do not worry that your transition to contact-less services disqualifies you from inclusion. The business you’re marketing is still an SAB if it\u2019s painting a house or delivering a meal while observing social distancing. Google likely needs to update its guidelines to make this clearer.<\/p>\n\n

    Hiding your address required<\/h4>\n\n

    You\u2019ll be providing an address to Google in the creation of an SAB listing. Even if it\u2019s a home address, warehouse location, or other facility you don\u2019t want the public to visit, you must have some sort of address. Then, Google\u2019s guidelines state that you should tell them to hide the address when creating the SAB\u2019s listing.<\/p>\n\n

    Google will automatically hide the address if you answer \u201cno\u201d to the question \u201cDo you want to add a location customers can visit, like a store or office?\u201d when setting up a new listing.<\/p>\n\n

    There are many reasons businesses object to this requirement. As mentioned earlier, it\u2019s long been debated whether hiding an address impacts a listing\u2019s local rankings, but whether or not it does, listings with hidden address listings lack pins\/markers on Google\u2019s mapped displays, compared to their brick-and-mortar counterparts. It\u2019s a definite disadvantage in terms of visual impact. The lack of a published address may also influence whether customers trust that a business is truly local to them, and this could adversely affect calls and leads.<\/p>\n\n

    Nevertheless, it\u2019s Google\u2019s position that this business model should hide its address, and clear its address from the GMB dashboard if it previously published one.<\/p>\n\n

    Setting a service area allowed<\/h4>\n\n

    Older GMB listings had a feature that let you set a radius depicting the service area. On new listings, however, you must enter cities or postal codes to depict where your SAB serves. You can enter up to 20 such points. The boundaries of such areas shouldn\u2019t exceed about two hours of driving distance from where the business is based.<\/p>\n\n

    No study has ever found that what you enter as your service area impacts your local rankings in any way. If you choose to depict them, it\u2019s for the information of customers.<\/p>\n\n

    More than one listing allowed for some models<\/h4>\n\n

    If the SAB you\u2019re marketing has multiple, separately staffed locations about two hours apart from one another, and with non-overlapping service areas, you\u2019re allowed more than one listing. I highly recommend having a unique phone number for each office, if possible.<\/p>\n\n

    Joy Hawkins has done a praiseworthy job\u00a0summarizing the confusion that\u2019s historically surrounded this topic<\/a>, given that Google had previously stated that SABs could only have a single listing per state while not appearing to apply this rule to franchises. The latest addition of the two-hour context has made the guidelines better and clearer.<\/p>\n\n

    However, don\u2019t create multiple listings for the different services the SAB offers. For example, an HVAC company may not have one listing for heater repair and another for air conditioner repair. Google sees this as just one brand, and it\u2019s eligible for just one listing.<\/p>\n\n

    Other notes for SABs<\/h4>\n\n

    A few last things to know:<\/p>\n\n